NSDC subject should not be fate of Shariy, Pryamiy TV channel, but issue of Cabinet – expert
KYIV. Feb 19 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The subject of the meeting of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) of Ukraine should not concern the fate of video blogger Anatoliy Shariy or the purchase of the Pryamiy television channel, but the issue of reformatting the Cabinet of Ministers, Director of the Ukrainian Barometer sociological service Viktor Nebozhenko said.
"Regarding today's NSDC, I think that the president has many problems. It is, certainly, good that he loads us with subjects where we allow ourselves to delve deeply into them, but this is not the president's agenda. The most important thing for the president is to find a worthy prime minister instead of mechanical Shmyhal [...] In fact, the NSDC subject should not be the fate of, say, Shariy or the Pryamiy television channel, but who will be the prime minister," Nebozhenko said during a roundtable conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Friday.
According to him, head of the Batkivschyna party Yulia Tymoshenko could become a strong prime minister at the moment. "She [Tymoshenko] can now be a strong prime minister. In a couple of years she will no longer be interested in it, and it will be impossible for the president to elect a prime minister. This is such a unique situation," Nebozhenko said.
In turn, Director of the Institute of Global Strategies Vadym Karasiov said the President of Ukraine was faced with the dilemma of the technical prime minister.
"On the one hand, this is convenient, because the technical prime minister is another 'X' or another inexpressiveness in this policy, which is convenient. As it is more convenient to manage the Cabinet of Ministers or economic policy, or set trends in economic policy through a technical one, gray, mechanical prime minister. But on the other hand, then the question arises, the problem of responsibility, because the grayer, more technical and inexpressive prime minister, the more political responsibility in this or that economic failure is transferred to the figure of the president," Karasiov said.
In his opinion, the president's team, indeed, could have its own proposal for Tymoshenko. "Tymoshenko is not in the game, because there are no channels, there is no mediacratic component, because the principle of party building in Batkivschyna is different, it is based on regional cells, leaders of the merged territorial communities, on mass, human politics, and not on media presentation with all their fakes, news content, post-truth. But this does not mean that Tymoshenko is out of the game. Being not in the game does not mean being out of the game," the political scientist said.
"This opens up opportunities for the presidential team to really have its own proposal for Tymoshenko on the correct positioning in the political game that Zelensky's team has conceived today and which is trying to implement it," Karasiov said.